


Pieces Left Behind

by arim716



Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Stream of Consciousness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-06
Updated: 2019-04-06
Packaged: 2020-01-05 11:32:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 551
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18365156
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arim716/pseuds/arim716
Summary: Steve is cold. Bruce hates thinking. Tony can't stop working. Even before the snap, they weren't okay.





	Pieces Left Behind

**Author's Note:**

> Just some thoughts I've been thinking for some time - this is more for myself than anything else ngl.

Steve hates the cold. It used to be his asthma and the fear of scaring Bucky and Ma with those near-death illnesses he would catch, but now it’s different. When he came to - another century, a different world - they told him to learn about himself as if he was a fucking artifact from a history textbook, and he never corrected what they had written. Never told them that his timeline hadn’t gone from crashing the plane to waking up at SHIELD, because what would he have said? _Actually, I woke up when my body began stitching me back together from the broken limbs and bloody mess that I turned into. Actually, I waited for days in the pitch black emptiness of it all, waiting for someone to find me but knowing they would never come. Actually, I wanted to end it myself, on my own terms, because that would be better than starving but that serum is really goddamn stubborn so I laid down, gave up, said my goodbyes, and froze like an honorable man, like a true soldier, like that stage-doll they all wanted me to be, but I was scared, I was so scared, and I was so, so, so cold and_ \- no. He wouldn’t do that. He’s Captain America, the hero from the 1940s who lives in New York City and pretends that he’s flinching from surprise when he steps out into snow and refuses to look Sam in the face because he knows that it’d all come spilling out, that it’s so cold, so, so cold here and he’s all alone.

Bruce wears himself like a second skin. In his dreams, he can’t tell who the real him is anymore - the Hulk morphs into him like fluid states of matter, like they’re exactly the same, and every morning he wakes up surprised to see himself in his own bed and not the ruins of a city. He learns the lies so easily. They slip from his mouth as easy smiles and light-hearted laughs at jokes that are far too pointed to be anything but fear. _No, of course I can control it. The big green guy? He doesn’t scare me._ He tells people that he doesn’t remember what happens when he’s… _not him_ , but it’s always a lie. All his memories are tinged with green.

The world thinks he’s invincible. And Tony likes it that way - really, he does. But there's rough patch the size of a thumbprint on his head from where he’s connected with the cold metal of his suit too many times, and when he holds Pepper’s hand or puts his hand on Peter’s shoulder all he can feel is the weight of his mistakes and the terrors of the world, and it’s _crushing crushing crushing_. And so he locks himself away in the lab and works instead of sleeping or thinking or eating or drinking because _it’s the price I have to pay for the mistakes of the past, and I’ll keep fixing things until I can fix myself,_ except he knows that one’ll never come to pass, so he forces the thoughts out of his head and stares at the red and gold of his one true god until his ears stop ringing and the desert sand is out of his eyes.


End file.
